Governors and Approval

Governors and Approval

Okay, I lied in another post; I am going to talk about approval because it brings up a concern about how planetary governors are going to work and the need to reduce micromanaging of planets. Below is Earth at turn 551. Approval is 100%. My production is focused on manufacturing and research with just enough wealth to keep my approval at 100%.

So, here is what I would want my planetary governor to do: Maintain just enough wealth to keep approval at 100% and split the rest 50-50 between manufacturing and research. Adjust this automatically as conditions on the planet change (say I build a troop transport that reduces the population), and adjust as empire-wide events cause approval to change.

Right now, I have to do this manually for every planet. It is a chore! (Not fun.) Will the governors be smart enough to allow me to automate this with the level of detail that makes it useful?

Now look at the planet Cremor I.

Notice that with wealth at 100% of my production, I can still only manage 19% approval. (This is the only planet where I am having this problem, including other Ghost Worlds.)

Now look at the bonuses to wealth the planet is receiving.

Finally, look at the penalties and the total approval (I REALLY don't understand this).

I could build more wealth improvements, but that would seem a waste given that the planet has a major research bonus. What am I missing?

You wealth income is 46.9 and your maintenance is 53. That is lowering your wealth quotient in relation to approval. On the other hand, it is a bit too high but that's not unusual right now as things are still being balanced.

Edit: A solution would be to build more farms. Farms produce more population and population improves all things (Wealth, Research, Manufactorying) with less cost. This would help as well.

why aren't people happy when I focus on production or research? They get paid for their work, I'm not a communist dictator...most games. but whats the logic behind this,why aren't people happy to have a job or working in finance even if the planet isn't economically productive?

Packing in the economy starbases to provide lots of overlapping wealth bonus for worlds is the only reason my morale is up (refer to my other post about starbases and balance for picture of what I did).

From what I understand, the maintenance costs from planet improvements helps to kill approval. You seem to have a many high tier planet improvements (which normally has high maintenance costs). Destroying a few should help boost morale (though you might want to try something else).

Farming should be used to some degree on all worlds. Production = population * production bonuses. This is before you split distribution to manufacturing, research, and economy. This is before you get bonuses to manufacturing, research, and economy. Focusing on population allows you the flexibility to change production on a whim. Bonuses to production or anything else isn't of much use unless you already have a population base.

Anyways, I normally counter low approval by using starbases. They can be equipped with modules that boosts approval. That way my worlds can specialize instead of me needing keep some production aside for approval.

Yes farms are the key. It took me a while to figure this out but I think population pressures has to do with the relationship to available food to the food needed the sustain the population. I don't know what gap you need to maintain but you have to maintain a gap to keep the planet happy. Like others have said here you also want to build farms because of the base production population provide. You could probable get more production from a class 4 planet with nothing but farms and and maxed out economic star base then you would get from the planet you just posted.

It's also worth mentioning that, while farms are a good measure for alleviating approval issues, eventually the planet reaches max pop again, and there's only so many hexes. Hopefully by that time you've managed to research more advanced morale-related techs.

It's also worth mentioning that, while farms are a good measure for alleviating approval issues, eventually the planet reaches max pop again, and there's only so many hexes. Hopefully by that time you've managed to research more advanced morale-related techs.

More people also increases the amount of money you can make on the planet. When the planet's income starts to go over its costs (maintenance for all those buildings) then that too will help with approval issues as approval is now tied to wealth. So yes, you will still take a hit in approval when the max pop mark is hit, it will not be as high as the previous time.

More people also increases the amount of money you can make on the planet. When the planet's income starts to go over its costs (maintenance for all those buildings) then that too will help with approval issues as approval is now tied to wealth. So yes, you will still take a hit in approval when the max pop mark is hit, it will not be as high as the previous time.

That I did not know. I always wondered why wealth morale was easier to manage later in the game, and now I know!

More people also increases the amount of money you can make on the planet. When the planet's income starts to go over its costs (maintenance for all those buildings) then that too will help with approval issues as approval is now tied to wealth. So yes, you will still take a hit in approval when the max pop mark is hit, it will not be as high as the previous time.

I was thinking about this over the weekend and I figured out why I have shied away from too many farms--in GC2, too large a population produced an unmanageable approval drop. Once population exceeded 22B (2 fully upgraded farms on a non-homeworld planet), anything more required so many approval improvements that it wasn't worth it. So, in the Beta, as my approval dropped, my GC2 instinct kicked in and demanded smaller populations to improve approval score. I am now retooling my planets with more farms to see what effect that has. Thanks, Ryat.

Also, to the developers who will hopefully read this, please don't lose sight of the first part of the original post about governors. Thanks.